Newsflash: Georgians must assume responsibility for themselves and their families.

Governor Nathan Deal sat the state down and gave it a talking to during his inaugural address today.
Whether it was the subject of crime, education, transportation, the water crisis or healthcare reform, Deal pushed a paternal tone that conveyed a message of 'I've been a longtime gone, and look what you've done to my great state' in his first message to Georgia as its 82nd Governor.

One of the other core responsibilities of State government is the education of our children. This is an undertaking that has been the primary focus of several of my predecessors in this office. Despite their best efforts and that of dedicated teachers and educators all across our state, our public education system in grades K through 12 has failed to make the progress we need...

This failure is a stain on our efforts to recruit businesses to our State and is a contributing factor in the frightening crime statistics previously mentioned. High dropout rates and low graduation percentages are incompatible with the future I envision for Georgia.

Betraying little about the way he intends to tackle some of the large problems he identified in his almost 20-minute speech, Deal said enough to sketch a vision of limited government and personal responsibility helping Georgia find a way out of the hard times it faces today.
As some pointed out earlier, Deal outlined a somewhat progressive direction in handling the state's overcrowded corrections system, advocating for day reporting centers, drug-, DUI- and Mental Health-courts. But don't think the new Governor's going to be soft on crime, he's asking the entire state to get his back as he works to break the cycle of crime that threatens the security of all Georgians.
Education was next on deck, and even though Deal said Georgia's education system is failing the state's economic development efforts, he said the entire state has got to get his back in making learning a top priority under his administration. HOPE will be passed on to future generations, but there are going to be hard decisions about who is going to get cut out of lottery-funded goodness.
Add to the list of things that are ruining Georgia's opportunities for economic development--Transportation. Driving a car anywhere in Atlanta sucks--especially today. So we need to cast aside our petty regional divisions and get behind the effort to find solutions to successfully meeting the state's challenges. Deepening the Port of Savannah may be a way to do that and bring more jobs to Georgia, so Deal says he's all about it.
And while we're talking about water, the Governor wants you to know that he's going to continue talking about it too--with Alabama and Florida. And whether that works or not, we're going to start building reservoirs and begin implementing plans for water conservation.
And even though that might be something that requires federal oversight or assistance, the former Congressman wants you to know that he does not welcome the federal government's assistance in delivering healthcare to its people.

As Governor, I will resist the efforts of the Federal Government to mandate its solutions on our people, our businesses and our State government.

You can hear the many people in the state Capitol who have the Governor's back on this in the audio of Monday's address.
Despite all the things mentioned above, Deal used the final portion of his inaugural address to say that his administration will be measuring success by job creation. And as with many of these challenges, the best way to move forward is through limited government and personal responsibility.

Audio of Governor Deal's Inaugural Address

Listen to the future of Georgia Politics with me, via WMUM Macon and my RTR 280 DRs. Total blogger fail on on the inability to host audio files (see my sister blog @ exploremilledgeville.org).

Portion of Text from Governor's Inaugural Address

These highlights come from the We Are Politics website, click on the post title to follow the link.


Highlights of the Inaugural Address of Governor Nathan Deal:

Throughout this "Experiment in Democracy," there has been a healthy skepticism by "We the People" about the role of government which we have "ordained and established." The lingering pain of this "Great Recession" in which we are still engulfed has underscored the urgency of re-examining the role of government in our lives.

Presently, one out of every thirteen Georgia residents is under some form of correctional control. It cost about Three Million Dollars per day to operate our Department of Corrections. And yet, every day criminals continue to inflict violence on our citizens and an alarming number of perpetrators are juveniles.

Our dedicated law enforcement officers must not be targets for criminals. Anyone who harms one of them harms us all.

Breaking the culture of crime and violence is not a task for law enforcement officials alone. Parents must assume more responsibility for their children. Communities must marshal their collective wills; civic and religious organizations must use their influence to set the tone for expected behavior.

One of the other core responsibilities of State government is the education of our children. This is an undertaking that has been the primary focus of several of my predecessors in this office. Despite their best efforts and that of dedicated teachers and educators all across our state, our public education system in grades K through 12 has failed to make the progress we need.

This failure is a stain on our efforts to recruit businesses to our State and is a contributing factor in the frightening crime statistics previously mentioned. High dropout rates and low graduation percentages are incompatible with the future I envision for Georgia.

I ask the members of the General Assembly and our State School Board to work with me to restore discipline in our schools, eliminate bureaucratic nonsense, adopt fair funding mechanisms and reward quality and excellence. If we do these things, we will convey the magic of learning to our children and restore the joy of teaching to our educators.

I am dedicated to honoring the promise that has been made to our students through HOPE and will work with the General Assembly to tailor the program to the financial realities we face today. I was not elected to make easy decisions, but difficult ones. In this legislative session we will save the HOPE for future generations.

We will do our part to deepen the Savannah port in order to accommodate the larger vessels that will soon pass through the Panama Canal. But we must do more. Our rail capacity and cargo routes must be improved and expanded. We must not miss this opportunity to provide jobs for Georgians.

Highway congestion, especially in the Greater Atlanta area is a deterrent to job growth in the region. If we do not solve this problem soon, we will lose the businesses who want to expand or locate in our State.

I am dedicated to working with all elements of government to improve our transportation system and I call on all Georgians to join us. We must put aside some of the regional differences of the past and work for the common good of our State.

As Governor, I will continue to pursue negotiations with Alabama and Florida to reach a resolution of the long standing dispute over the use of water in our Federal reservoirs and our major rivers.

We will develop regional reservoirs and continue our conservation efforts. We have been blessed with abundant water resources and we must use them wisely.

As Governor, I will resist the efforts of the Federal Government to mandate its solutions on our people, our businesses and our State government.

We will do our part to provide healthcare to our most vulnerable citizens, but government cannot make or keep us healthy. The primary responsibility for good health rests with individuals and families. We can help cultivate a culture of wellness in our educational programs and offer incentives in Medicaid and the State Health Insurance Program, but it is only individuals and families that can make healthy lifestyle choices.

So today as we embark on this journey to lead our State forward, I call on all Georgians to assume responsibility for themselves and their family. I call on communities and civic and religious organizations to continue and expand their efforts to serve the needs of people in their area. State government cannot and should not be expected to provide for us what we can provide for ourselves.

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

This time last year he said it was "a daunting challenge that precedes my time as governor," now its just a problem in the rear view mirror.
Jim Galloway reports that Governor Sonny Perdue felt real bad about some things as he packed up his office in the Capitol last week.

"If they want to get paid, they shouldn't commit crimes."

It seems like common sense. But somehow, state Senator Johnny Grant (R-Milledgeville) has created a stir over statements he made concerning a strike by inmates in several state prisons over conditions in the state prisons and the state's practice of not paying prisoners for their labor.

Commenting in his role as Senate State Institutions and Properties Chair, Grant told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that he's not about to change the state's practice of not paying the majority of prisoners who provide labor to Georgia counties and municipalities and who toil away in the Correctional Industries program.

"If they want to get paid, they shouldn't commit crimes," said state Sen. Johnny Grant, R-Milledgeville, chairman of the Senate Institutions and Property Committee, which oversees prisons.

Besides, he said, "If we started paying inmates, we'd also start charging them for room and board, as well. They ought to be careful what they ask for."

Georgia is no stranger to trouble in its penal system. Prison Historian Larry R. Findlay Sr. writes in "History of the Georgia Prison System" that Georgia's Department of Corrections has often been a venue for moral questions about the treatment of prisoners.

Governor John Milledge first lobbied the General Assembly to establish a penitentiary system "to soften the penal code in use at that time,"which drew heavily form the English system of penal law wherein "branding, pillory, and stocks, in addition to imprisonment and execution were used."

By 1820, the state's penitentiary system was in debt. The General Assembly abolished the system eleven years later in 1831, re-instating the punitive practices of the past and returning many prisoners to the counties they where they were convicted. But the state couldn't abdicate its responsibilities for long and the legislature re-established it the penitentiary system by the next year.

In 1866 the General Assembly laid the infrastructure to take its prison system from a money pit to a money maker.

In December 1866, the legislature passed an Act to regulate the management of the penitentiary and to provide for the inferior courts of each county to hire out offenders to contractors engaged in such repair work [for the penitentiary, itself, at the time]. No lease was to be made which did not relive the state of all expenses during the term of the lease, and no lease was to be made longer than five years. This is the Act that led to the Georgia chain gang.

By operating the Convict Lease System,in which male and female prisoners were leased to individuals or companies for hard labor details such as railroad construction, Georgia's Penitentiary emptied its prison buildings and began turning a profit.

As you can imagine, its hard to keep the state government from going hog wild with any program that it is making money on. Findlay writes that by 1870, there were no more convicts in the penitentiaries and the state discharged all corrections employees the next year. Six years later, the program had become so engrained into the system that the state was able to lease all its prisoners "to three companies for twenty years for a total of $500,000."

Now this is a privatization plan that many legislators will wish they had access to as budget negotiations begin this session.

But public opinion was turning against the Convict Lease System, and Findlay describes 1890 as the beginning of a decade marked by "public outcries over brutalities suffered by the convicts under the lease program." Newspapers including the Macon Telegraph, Atlanta Georgian and the Columbus Enquirer-Sun rallied the people against the system of leasing convicts to private companies.

The legislature ended the Convict Lease System in 1908 by passing an act "to provide that misdemeanor convicts could work on public roads under state or county supervision. In no case, were they to be placed under the control of private parties. Female convicts were sentenced to the female prison instead of the chain gang."

More than 100 years later, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and New York Times are reporting a complex network of prisoner groups that are "not known to cooperate," organized via contraband cell phones, word-of-mouth and the help of family members and prisoner advocates.

These prisoners' story is an interesting study in networking and promotion. No one can doubt that they undertook this large task of organizing these disparate factions because they are upset about the conditions in the prisons. Those same kind of conditions that led the federal government to intervene in the administration of Georgia State Prison in Reidsville in the 1970s and '80s when 52 prisoners at filed a class action lawsuit over the issues of overcrowding, racial segregation, violence and intimidation on behalf of the guards

No one can doubt that the effects of the economic recession have been particularly harsh on those Georgians who have been shoe-horned into a smaller and smaller DOC footprint.

The Times reports that these strikes began in earnest when the department banned cigarettes earlier this year. And the organizers say they will be ready to unleash another wave of protests, which may not be as peaceful, if their demands are not met.

I hope that prison and state officials will work diligently to find some kind of compromise with the men and women in their charge. Georgia's prison guards' jobs are hard enough, we don't need to be putting them directly into a hostile situation after we've asked them to sacrifice so much already. Access to better healthcare and more educational opportunities are something that can expand jobs for Georgians who don't need to go to jail to find a job. But I don't believe there are many Georgians who are going to get behind a plan to begin paying inmates.

We've come a long way since the beginning of the penitentiary system in Milledgeville, but we haven't come that far yet.

Qualifying Day 2 Recap

There is nothing new to report in Baldwin County elections from Tuesday, but read Thursday's Union-Recorder to find out which Baldwin County pol is jumping into one of the two local races for the General Assembly.
U.S. Senate candidate R.J. Hadley stopped by 165 Garrett Way yesterday to tell us about his campaign. We'll have a recap of that conversation later this week.
And in somewhat election related news: State Sen. Johnny Grant, R-Milledgeville, and state Rep. Rusty Kidd, I-Milledgeville, announced that they've negotiated a $3.2 million allocation to reopen the Powell Building at Central State Hospital.
The allocation was couched in the terms of saving the state's only designated emergency receiving facility. The money has already passed the state Senate and has to make it into the conference committee budget to go to the governor's desk.
Despite all its implications, One Capital Removed welcomes the return of the strong man Baldwin County legislator.

Maybe Baker does stand a chance against the Barnes Machine

Ratcheting up the partisan fervor today, I just received an e-mail from the state House Communications Office informing me that state Rep. Billy Mitchell, D-Stone Mountain, introduced a resolution recognizing Attorney General Thurbert Baker for independence and courage.

"I applaud the Attorney General for his independence," said
Representative Mitchell. "Thurbert Baker has consistently stood up for his beliefs. He deserves great recognition."

Baker has been riding a wave of national media attention appearing on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "The Rachel Maddow Show" yesterday to talk about this impeachment thing.
And to add to it, state Rep. Mark Hatfield, R-Waycross, appeared on Fox News yesterday to talk about his end of getting the Baker message to the people.
As I am a firm believer that state politics aren't important to people because they know nothing about them, I think this national exposure may give Georgia's Attorney General a positive bounce in the polls, and I'm sure Georgia Democrats who positively hate the Republican majority are absolutely ready to get behind the man that's standing up to right side of the aisle.
Either way you look at it, this is a whole lot better than some crappy Web animation of a bull hitting a rat out of the Ted (which is where I'll be this Monday for the Home Opener!).

Kidd Passes his first bill

State Representative Rusty Kidd passed his first piece of legislation through the house Wednesday.
Kidd authored House Bill 1310, which--with the utmost efficiency (see the link)--amends the Official Code of Georgia Annotated to allow the Brain and Spinal Injury Trust Commission to solicit federal funds.
Mr. Modesty, Kidd didn't mention that anything special had happened when I interviewed him Thursday about Crossover Day and his perception of his first session, so far.
I read it on Tom Baxter's Twitter feed this morning:

Rep. Rusty Kidd passes his first bill. Says dad Culver is looking on with pride "from somewhere."

Raising A Little Hell--What Can It Hurt?

Update 2: Silly of me not to notice this, but legislators changed the General Assembly's calendar and will not be meeting today. Although I haven't talked with since the calendar change was enacted, I assume Kidd will address the state House Thursday morning.

Update: Representative Kidd just texted to inform me that he will be scheduled to speak about the situation at Central State Hospital from the well Wednesday morning.

State Representative Rusty Kidd, I-Milledgegville, called me Sunday evening to say he is going to take a point of privilege Monday morning and go to the well on the House floor and speak against the closing of Adult Mental Health Services the Powell Building.
Kidd said he has been talking with employees on the phone and at his downtown offices all weekend.
"I've been meeting with employees and the things they are saying make me want to take the well and raise hell," he said. "It's not right to any employee to fire them when they only need four more months to retire with 34 years."
Kidd said he also has questions about the specific reasoning behind closing Adult Mental Health Services at Central State--was it a federally mandated or recommended closure, or was it a budgetary decision?
Kidd said, and several Central State employees have told me, that physical plant, staffing and training changes were being made to meet federal requirements right up until the January announcement that Adult Mental Health Services was closing.
You can keep him honest live here.

"Perishable items produced in the state do not even have to be reported"

Last Friday, the AJC had this delicious vignette about culinary culture under the Gold Dome.

"Whoever said there is no such thing as a free lunch never stepped inside the Georgia Capitol when the state Legislature comes to town.
Not only lunch, but breakfast, brunch, dinner and an endless array of artery-clogging snackage are heaped on lawmakers’ plates every day -- and night -- during the annual 40-day session.

I guess they were simply trying to whet readers' appetites for this hearty main course in the paper's Sunday edition.

"New House Speaker David Ralston has advocated for ethics reform at the state Legislature, but that doesn’t mean he’s steering clear of meals with lobbyists.
Reports to the State Ethics Commission show lobbyists spent about twice as much on Ralston in January as they did on Glenn Richardson, the man he replaced, during the same month last year.

Lame Duck or Not, Perdue is Swinging for the Fences

State Representative Rusty Kidd turned me on to this article in the AJC this morning.
It seems Governor Sonny Perdue has some more far-reaching plans to expand power in the Governor's office by proposing a constitutional referendum to allow subsequent governors the ability to appoint the Agriculture, Insurance and Labor commissioners, as well as the state School Superintendent.
The change, should it be adopted by two-thirds majorities in the state House and Senate and a majority of voters in the November election, would go into effect in 2014.
AJC is reporting that the Governor is looking to other states in his decision to move to appointing these state officers.

"Georgia is one of only five states that elect a labor commissioner and one of only nine states to elect its agriculture commissioner. Twelve other states elect an insurance commissioner and 14 vote for state school superintendent."

The measure is being sold as a way of ensuring that commissioners are staying focused on state issues and not out chasing higher offices.
Kidd wonders whether the Governor has the political capital to move forward on a sweeping change like this his last year in office. But he added that House Majority Leader Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons Island, told him he is contemplating the idea of packaging Perdue's proposal with Kidd's proposed constitutional amendment to limit the governor to one six-year term.
Expect to hear more about this in the coming week

Another unexpected expense under the Gold Dome

In another interesting, yet not exactly germane, note from Macon's General Assembly bureau, it appears that the walls are falling down in the Capitol Building.

ATLANTA — Large pieces of plaster from a top floor of the state Capitol came crashing through a tile ceiling last month, smashing a computer and table in a legislative office below.
The chunks of plaster fell during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, and no one was in the office at the time. Legislative secretaries returned to work to find state Rep. Mickey Channell’s office in a shambles — gaping holes in the ceiling, smashed furniture and plaster on the floor.

At least now we know that Milledgeville isn't the only thing state government is allowing to crumble these days.

House Seating Assignments Making News This Weekend

This Saturday's Political Notebook in the Macon Telegraph has an interesting observation concerning Baldwin County legislator Rusty Kidd.

Kidd in Ralston’s seat
Speaking of the pecking order in the House of Representatives, new state Rep. Rusty Kidd, I-Milledgeville, landed an interesting seating assignment.

In offices, where legislators sit in the House Chamber often speaks to their position, Kidd’s seat has a nice bit of immediate history. Before he was elected speaker of the house this year, state Rep. David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, occupied Kidd’s new desk.

Governor Reacts to DOT Board Accounting Changes

This story seems to be getting more complicated all the time. An auditor I talked to yesterday said that the change in accounting practices--from accrual to cash and back to accrual--should not be the main issue here as the two practices are really just different ways of looking at a budget and spending plan, and are commonly used interchangeably to give a more holistic view of an organization's financial well being.
Yes! That means I was wrong, I think?
But this clearly shows that the parties in Atlanta are circling the wagons and getting ready for a showdown.
From the Governor's Office:

Statement of Governor Sonny Perdue Regarding DOT Board Action on Accounting Methods
Thursday, January 28, 2010 Contact: Office of Communications 404-651-7774

ATLANTA – Governor Sonny Perdue issued the following statement today regarding actions by the DOT Board in defying the State Auditor and voting to change the department’s accounting methods:

“Today’s action by the DOT Board exhibits a clear defiance of state law and a frightening lack of concern for our state’s financial systems.

The state’s finance team, along with SRTA, identified an opportunity to refinance outstanding bonds for road projects and save DOT a total of $22 million in debt service, including $16 million in FY 2011. Given the uncertainty that has now been unnecessarily created by the Board, we cannot proceed with the refinancing at this time.

The Board is refusing to heed the sound advice of the State Auditor and the department’s own legal and financial staff. Previous Attorney General opinions also make it very clear that the department must follow the same accounting procedures as the rest of state government.

While I am incredibly frustrated that we are forced to pass up a substantial savings opportunity, I am more concerned that this Board continues to act irresponsibly and show such little regard for the state’s conservative fiscal management policies.”

###

Parham Stirs the Pot

State Transportation Board member Bobby Parham showed up again in the AJC late last week. If you didn't catch that, you can check it out here. (The best part of the story, and the most illuminating, is found in the comments section.)
Parham also stopped by the Union-Recorder offices Monday to defend a State Transportation Board decision to reverse a former DOT Commissioner Gena Abraham (Evans)-era accounting change that he says has slowed the DOT's ability to keep Georgians at work building and maintaining the country's best state highway system.
Parham said the change, from a cash to an accrual method of accounting, would allow the DOT to borrow money to fund the state's portion of federally-backed road projects on the promise of the federal government making good on their end of the investment.
Evans, a perennial Perdue appointee, implemented the cash accounting procedure after a 2008 DOT audit accused a DOT treasurer of purposefully intending "to hide the true state of GDOT’s finances."
As the AJC and ATL Bizness Chronicle reports say above, the state Transportation Board has already passed a motion to move back to the accrual form of accounting in last week's meeting. But Parham said Trans Board Chair Bill Kuhlke called a special meeting for this Thursday, and he (Parham) thinks Kulhke will try to get the board to reconsider the motion, or at least postpone the change until the next fiscal year, which begins in July.
Board members are asking Attorney General Thurbert Baker to decide whether or not it is constitutional for DOT to use the accrual accounting.
Parham says there is more to this story, so watch it grow legs Friday.

View from the Newsroom

We didn't get yesterday's news until approximately 4:45 p.m. I don't know how to contextualize that fact.
I feel that Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities spokesman Tom Wilson went out of his way to make sure we got the information before we read about it in someone else's paper. But as we got the news, we began to notice that other Middle Georgia media outlets were already posting incomplete stories as we were just hearing it.
As you may well be able to imagine, when news like this breaks at 5 in the afternoon, it is hard to get people on the phone to talk about it. Central State Hospital spokespeople had already gone home--and that didn't matter much anyways because Atlanta had put a gag order on them. And the legislative delegation was either incommunicado or wasn't saying anything until they had more details.
But the eeriest part about the afternoon was overhearing the phone calls people were making from other departments of the paper as the news filtered throughout the building.
I heard the phrase 'they're closing the Powell Building' ring out repeatedly through the next two hours as we rushed to try and write stories for today's front page.
Milledgeville has gone through a lot of blood letting in the last two years, but this may be the biggest blow of all of them.
The dome of the Powell Building is as much of a symbol of the City of Milledgeville as the north and south gates of the Old Capitol. Central State Hospital is synonymous with the community that hosted it, and now the focal point of that institution will be moth-balled like the rest of the historic campus around it.
And to add insult to injury, the state is going to disrupt the lives of another 200 people in 'giving them the opportunity' to follow their job to where ever it is needed.
Some People Need Their Jobs Right Where They Have Them.

Central State Coverage from Here and There

Because the Union-Recorder doesn't put much of their content online, I thought I would use the blog to connect local readers to more information about the symbolic end of Central State Hospital.
And you might want to read what some senior reporters have to say about this complex issue anyways.
The AJC has this report that delves deep into their back pages to chronicle the many times that Central State has wound up in their paper. It also details the 1960's coverage by the late Jack Nelson.
The Telegraph gives a good testimonial from a Macon-area mental health advocate about the struggle to get Middle Georgians with mental health issues assistance since Central State started diverting clients to other hospitals in November. That part of the story comes four paragraphs down.
The story also quotes state Sen. Johnny Grant about the closing.

"Two more area prisons are on the chopping block, and a partial shutdown at Central State is “not what Baldwin County needs to hear right now,” state Sen. Johnny Grant, R-Milledgeville, said Wednesday."

Although not strictly related, Lucid Idiocy posted this earlier in the day about the exodus of correctional jobs in Milledgeville.

Below is the text of the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities press release announcing the closure.

STATE CONSOLIDATING HOSPITAL-BASED MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

ATLANTA - Adult mental health services at Central State Hospital in
Milledgeville, Georgia, are being permanently moved to other hospitals within the state’s behavioral health system, the state agency in charge of the hospital announced today. The hospital will continue serving people with developmental disabilities, those in its nursing home, and those in its maximum security forensic facility, which serves people referred for treatment by the courts. Since November 2009, people in the areas served by Central State who needed hospitalization have received care at other state facilities instead. Based on their needs and the clinical assessment of their doctors, planning has begun to move the remaining few adult mental health consumers at Central State to other hospitals or discharge them back to their communities by March 1.

“While we originally stopped new admissions to Central State to fix problems related to safety and treatment at the hospital, what we’ve found through that process is that other hospitals have been well able to accommodate those individuals,” said Dr. Frank Shelp, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD).

The move to consolidate hospital services where possible is part of the department’s larger strategy of improving the state’s behavioral health system so that it’s more weighted towards community-based services while still retaining a role for hospitals in providing acute care. Under its Voluntary Compliance Agreement with the federal government, the state of Georgia has worked to move more people out of institutions and provide them with services to help them live independently in their own communities.

Approximately 200 employees at Central State will be affected by the change in services. DBHDD’s Office of Human Resources and the hospital’s leadership will work with staff to identify other opportunities at Central State and other hospitals that remain understaffed in key areas.
###

Hoping for a detailed explanation

Behavioral Health Commissioner Dr. Frank Shelp will give his departmental budget presentation today at 11 p.m.
When I talked with state Rep. Rusty Kidd yesterday about the closing of the Adult Mental Health Services Program at Central State, he said that he would reserve all comments until he had heard it from the horse's mouth (Shelp). So you might want to hear it all yourself.
You should be able to watch via GPB here, but I'll tell you, I haven't been able to view any of these hearings there. It may be because I'm an apple egghead, as "Bubba" Williams said.

Hit the Ground Rolling

I had two conversations with freshman legislator Rusty Kidd today.
Kidd called to say that he and state Senator Johnny Grant, R-Milledgeville, met again Tuesday with the Governor and the heads of several state agencies that have facilities in Milledgeville to discuss ways of coordinating budget cuts so as to not heap punishment on any one Georgia community, i.e. Milledgeville.
But we also talked about the legislation for which Kidd has wasted no time putting in the hopper.
I've got to hand it to him, he's addressing some serious issues in this first batch of proposed legislation.
Kidd tackles the en vogue issue of ethics reform in House Bill 919, which saddles legislators with the onus of reporting expenditures made on them by lobbyists and anyone else who is providing them with gifts, meals, rides, etc that total over $100.
Kidd also put forth two proposals for raising additional revenues to meet the challenge of Georgia's budget crunch. House Bill 915 would change the definition of taxable nonresident to include entertainers who make more than $5,000 during any given year in the Peach State, and H.B. 918 would add two cents to the state sales tax, and provide for an automatic repealer once state revenue collections are equal to or greater than state revenues for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2006.
The grandest piece of legislation would constitutionally amend the way we elect our governor.
House Resolution 1090 would put forth a voter referendum to change the governor's term from a four- to a six-year term and cancel out a sitting governor's ability to succeed them-self.
Kidd said he got the idea to propose H.R. 1090 following a discussion with the late Tom Murphy, long-time Democratic Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, who told him that the worst piece of legislation he saw pass through the House let a governor repeat himself.
Overall, Kidd said these were all things that he has thought about during his almost four decades-long involvement in Georgia politics. With initial proposals like these, especially, potentially unpopular ones like the proposal to raise taxes, I can't wait to see what he'll think of next.

"After Today, Let's Go Enjoy Christmas"

From our seat, One Capital Removed, that sounds like a good idea.
In what I'm reading on the three blogs listed below, David Ralston of Blue Ridge has won the Republican House Caucus' nomination for Speaker of the House.
The entire state House will have a vote on the matter when the General Assembly reconvenes January 11.
Ralston overcame the field of Bill Hembree and Larry O'Neal to win a majority on the second ballot. Hembree was knocked out on the first vote.
Other highlights from the caucus meeting included a teary-eyed speech from disgraced former Speaker Glenn Richardson who still has roughly $4,128.64 more Georgia taxpayer dollars in his future--and who knows how he'll land in the new year.
From AJC's Aaron Gould Shenin:

Richardson finished speaking, received a subdued, but full, standing ovation, and left the chamber. It was a moving speech, and Richardson several times stopped to gather his composure.
It was unclear from his remarks, however, whether he acknowledged responsibility for the position the caucus is now in.
Whatever “failures we may have made,” he said, “I take full responsibility for those failures. All of them. When you leave here today, you leave them behind, you leave them on my shoulders.”

And we'll conclude with Shenin's transcription of Ralston's brief acceptance speech:

“We’ve still got a long day here,” Ralston said from behind the speaker’s desk. “You made a country boy real happy and you honored me and I thank you very, very much for that. Secondly, I need your prayers. I wasn’t teasing when I said earlier we’ve got a big job ahead of us. I need Larry O’neal, I need Bill Hembree.

“After today, let’s go enjoy Christmas.”